the time between rulers; a space between; the gap after one epoch ends and another begins; the tumultuous and exciting period after scholarly boundaries become fluid and before new academic disciplines are fully defined; the blog of New York University's Draper Program

CFP Reminder, InVisible Culture Issue 24: Vulnerability

Here’s a call for papers at InVisible Culture that might interest some Draperites:

Please take a look at the CFP for InVisible Culture Issue 24: “Vulnerability,” on our website. Attached, you can find the new CFP in pdf.

“Vulnerability” – Issue 24

For its twenty-fourth issue, InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture invites scholarly articles and creative works that explore the concept of vulnerability.

Almost two weeks after Thomas Eric Duncan’s plane landed in Dallas from Liberia in late September, the Centers for Disease Control announced the first case of Ebola in the United States. News feeds immediately jumped at the report, the Dow Jones plunged 266 points and petitions to ban flights from Ebola-stricken countries have since been circulating across social media platforms. From ISIS to the crisis in Ukraine to employment security, the media’s pronouncement of threats posed by vulnerabilities (and certain invisibilities) are ubiquitous. It is worth considering, however, what the stakes are in maintaining such rhetoric, and whether it is possible to imagine alternatives. As urgency slips into a normative state of being, for Issue 24, we would like contributors to explore the various meanings of vulnerability. Are there critical practices which uniquely encourage or discourage vulnerability? Can we imagine vulnerability as a position of power? How does visual culture hold accountable social or political processes that produce states of precarity? What are the stakes in protecting technological vulnerabilities? How does the diffusion of images enable personal and social vulnerabilities?

We welcome papers and artworks that further the various understandings of vulnerability. Possible

topics of exploration include, but are not limited to:

• Vulnerability in artistic or scholarly production

• Labor, shelter, healthcare, and economic precarities

• Biological, affective, and political contagion

• Climate change and the environment

• International trade and policy agreements

• Network and technological vulnerabilities

• Sharing and distribution of personal information

• Political transparency

• States of emergency, endangerment, crisis, war, and risk

Please send completed papers (with references following the guidelines from the Chicago Manual of Style) of between 4,000 and 10,000 words to ivc[dot]rochester[at]gmail[dot]com by March 20th, 2015. Inquiries should be sent to the same address.